


Somewhere Else, Someone Else

by megxmas



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, In Your Eyes AU, M/M, Seizures, Slash, Soulmates, Stilinski Family Feels, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:36:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4822424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megxmas/pseuds/megxmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re sitting in the car, and Stiles’ dad is poring over the scans, gesturing violently at the air. ‘I just don’t understand!’ he says. ‘There’s never been anything out of the ordinary on any of your tests, and yet you always have seizures! How come nothing ever comes up?’</p><p>Stiles shrugs, has heard his dad complain about this a dozen times before. Stiles is pretty sure that he and Derek are some kind of magical soulmates and this is the way the world has decided to connect them, but somehow, he doesn’t think that'll fly as an explanation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Wherein Stiles has seizures, and when he does, finds himself looking at the world through Derek's eyes. The Hales didn't grow up in Beacon Hills, and there's no such thing as werewolves.)
> 
> Okay, so I got the idea for this reading the synopsis and watching the first seven minutes of 'In Your Eyes', a film written by Joss Whedon. Beyond the bare bones of the concept, I don't think there's many similarities at all, and I'm pretty sure the whole looking through someone else's eyes thing is done completely differently in the film. I don't know, I'm not very good at watching movies. I didn't try to rip anything off.
> 
> The underage thing is Kate and Derek, and here Derek's only a couple of years older than Stiles. I think it gets a bit freeform.
> 
> Any mistakes are my own!

It starts when Stiles is eight, wounds still fresh from his mother’s death, an uncontrollable mess scraped back together and held in place with newly buzzed hair and an unfocused mind. He doesn’t concentrate, doesn’t do his homework, spends his lunchtimes alternating between idly flicking rocks across the playground and burning off energy chasing Scott.

The school’s at a loss, but doesn’t really want to discipline the kid who’s just lost his mother, and the Sheriff’s too busy working double shifts and drowning his sorrows to care. Stiles feels like the world’s given up on him, and he can’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t.

But then it starts.

He’s eating dinner with his dad, shovelling carrots into his mouth at an Olympic pace, when his world goes dark and his mind goes blank. He drops his fork, doesn’t hear it clatter onto the plate, doesn’t feel his dad’s hand press cautiously against his shoulder.

All of a sudden, all he can see is a rush of trees and grass tearing past him, so fast it’s as if he’s flying. The sun is high in the sky and he feels sick with the sensation of it, moving so fast but not moving at all. He looks down at the ground, sees bare feet hitting the forest floor at a brutal pace, even though he can’t feel the cool leaves there.

Unknowingly, his hands grip the table in front of him, wanting to hold on, to slow down, to stop himself running but not running, and then his head is turning sharply behind him, and there are people running there, a girl, a man; Stiles only catches a glimpse before he’s turning back to face ahead.

Suddenly the pace picks up, and Stiles is looking behind him more and more, quick looks back that make Stiles feel even dizzier. He’s not looking where he’s going, suddenly too panicked to focus, because while he’s whipping his head back and forth, he doesn’t notice the thick dark oak that looms ahead. When Stiles hits it dead on, he feels no pain. It still knocks him unconscious.

-

Stiles has to sit through what feels like hours of doctors’ appointments after that. Some prod at him, some talk to him, all of them look to his dad with solemn faces and offer no explanation.

His dad had described it as a seizure. Stiles didn’t think explaining what he’d seen would make any difference. Didn’t tell the doctors either, because he didn’t want to see his dad’s face after finding out he’d been lied to by his own son.

When it happens for the second time, Stiles is in the waiting room at the hospital, pushing cars around a fabric track while his dad reads the newspaper behind him. He drives them erratically, crashes them occasionally, just because he can, and then that sudden blindness descends on him again, the silence falling suddenly and with no warning. After a moment, his vision returns, but what he sees this time is the inside of a house. It’s as if he’s at a dining room table, and there are nearly a dozen faces sat with him, all talking and eating and laughing. Stiles is aware that he can see a hand that should be his spear some meat on a fork, and bring it up to where his mouth should be, but the whole thing feels so disjointed. He’s not eating, but he can sort of see himself eating?

And then he’s looking up to his right, at a smiling older woman, and Stiles feels a rush of grief, because this looks like somebody’s mother. The woman laughs, and he looks away, focusing all of his effort onto a potato on his plate.

And then the world is black again, before color returns to him with such force and strength that he falls back slightly. He blinks, trying to clear the fog, and he can hear and feel again, can hear a rush of voices and feel his dad’s arms around him. As his vision refocuses, he can see more doctors with charts, writing things down frantically, and one of them kneels in front of him, shining a light into his eyes and asking him questions he can’t quite understand.

It doesn’t come to anything. They can’t figure it out.

-

After a few more months of head scratching and pointless tests, they put it down to a rare form of epilepsy that can’t be controlled with therapy or medicine. It’s just one of those things; it’s not actually hurting Stiles, so they give his dad information on keeping Stiles away from sharp edges when it happens, and send them on their way.

The only good thing that comes from it is that they diagnose Stiles’ ADHD while they’re testing. It’s a small blessing, and it makes life a little easier.

Stiles doesn’t mention what he sees when he has seizures, knows instinctively that it would lead to a lot more questions and a lot more tests, and a lot more worried looks from his dad. He keeps quiet, says he doesn’t know what happens when he fits, and lets his dad wrap him in blankets and make him grilled cheese.

It’s worse when it happens at school. Because while the teachers and Scott all look at him with worry, the other kids laugh and push him in the playground. One time it happens when he’s changing for PE, and Jackson Whittemore stuffs a dirty sock in his mouth while Scott’s getting the teacher. He doesn’t tell his dad about that, doesn’t want to add one more worry onto his list of things to worry about.

He thinks about telling Scott about what he sees, because he’d keep it a secret and wouldn’t laugh at him, but there’s something about his visions that he wants to keep private. And it’s not like he can explain what he sees anyway, like he’s looking at the world through someone else’s eyes. And it’s not like what he sees is in any way interesting. It’s just mundane, everyday stuff. Once he’s in a shop, looking at cans, a hand coming out against his will to pick up some beans. Another time he’s at a picnic, picking apart a sandwich, leaving the bread and wolfing down some chicken. He’s at school a lot, looking at a board or teacher, or writing out words in smooth, slanted letters that in no way resemble his scratchy scrawl.

He may be only eight, but even he can figure out that he’s seeing out of someone else’s eyes. Because what he sees is way too exact and detailed to just be hallucinations. He always sees the same people, the same bedroom, the same handwriting. Often, there’s a girl with him, about sixteen, with dark hair and bright eyes, who smiles at him and laughs with him and flicks bits of bread at him across the table. Stiles has never had a sister, but he feels like this girl is somehow his. His seizures are always silent, only ever lasting a minute at most, but they happen maybe three times a week, and he always comes back from them feeling dizzy and homesick.

And yeah, there’s no way he’s telling anyone that, can only imagine the concerned looks he’d get. That thing adults do where they look at each other out of the corner of their eyes, and somehow reach a conclusion. He’d have to speak to a therapist, see more doctors. They’d somehow make out that it was all to do with his mom’s death, that it was some kind of trauma that caused him to snap, and have delusions about another family and a protective older sister.

Or maybe he has snapped. Maybe he is mad. He doesn’t want people to know that either.

-

‘You’re okay, Stiles, I’ve got you.’

There’s a big hand smoothing circles on his back, another one holding a glass of water just in front of him. Stiles blinks, feels a couple of tears fall down his cheeks, and reaches out shakily to grab onto the glass. His dad keeps holding it as he brings it to his lips and manages a few sips, and then it’s taken away from him. He can hear it being set down on a table behind him, and then he’s being lifted from where he’s sitting on the floor.

His dad puts him in a chair to the left of his desk and pulls a blanket from a drawer around his shoulders. He kneels in front of the chair and wipes his hands over Stiles’ cheeks, cupping his face gently.

As his senses return, Stiles remembers that he’s at the police station, had been doing homework on the floor by his dad’s desk as he waited for his shift to finish. He lets out a shuddering breath and nuzzles into his dad’s hands, letting his eyes fall closed.

‘You okay kiddo?’

Stiles opens his eyes and gives his dad a watery smile, before shaking his head because no, he’s not okay. He’s glad that his dad’s blinds are closed, because it never gets easier, knowing how people can stop and stare when he has his seizures.

His dad nods, concern pooling in his eyes, and he pulls his hands back and rests them on Stiles’ knees.

‘How about we go home?’ he asks, and Stiles nods, pulling the blanket tighter around himself.

His dad smiles gently and starts to collect up his things, and Stiles watches, trying not to think too hard about what he’d just seen.

-

In the two years that Stiles had spent looking through this other person’s eyes, he had virtually no idea what he looked like. Stiles figured he wasn’t too much older than him, because he wasn’t that much taller. (The assumption he was male coming from some masculine legs he’d seen while wearing shorts by a lake one time in the middle of summer.)

Stiles could see through the boy’s eyes a family of black hair and strong jaws, so maybe that was what this boy looked like?

This time though, when Stiles’ world had gone dark, he’d blinked and found himself gazing in the mirror.

The boy looking back at him was maybe twelve or thirteen, a shock of dark hair spiked up, eyes green and skin tanned. He saw the boy twist his cheeks, pulling at the skin and looking closely at the mirror. He picked up a razor from beside the sink, and Stiles hadn’t even noticed that they were in a bathroom, so intent in drinking in the sight of who he’d been for so long.

The boy tossed the razor in his hand a few times, looked back to his face, then sighed, dropping it back down. He ran a hand over his face and shook himself, and then Stiles had gone back to his own head.

-

Stiles can’t make sense of why he’s crying until he gets home and lets his dad manhandle him into bed, mug of hot cocoa pressed into his hands and blankets piled around him.

He thinks it has something to do with finally coming face to face with the eyes he’s been seeing out of. But then he also feels guilty, because this guy has no idea that Stiles keeps stealing bits of his life, watching his family and watching his school work and reading his books, and now Stiles knows what he looks like. It makes it harder for him to feel like he’s not doing anything wrong. He feels like a stalker, like someone with a camera hidden in a bedroom. He swallows down the cocoa, so hot it burns his throat, and takes another sip, because it’s all he deserves.

His dad sits next to him on the bed and wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close, and Stiles can’t help but burrow into him. His hand comes up to rest on the top of Stiles’ head and his fingers dance across his short hair, and maybe Stiles forgets that he’s just ten sometimes, feels like he has to be stronger and older to deal with everything. But he’s ten, just ten, and sometimes he needs his dad to hug him and tell him it’s all going to be okay when they both know it isn’t.

His dad presses a kiss to the top of his head and says, ‘Do you think the doctors gave up too soon? Do you think we should go back and get more tests done?’

Stiles sighs, because he really does not want to go back to be treated like a monkey in a cage at the zoo again.

He’d once spent a week in the hospital, had about a dozen blood tests done, half a dozen scans, had been made to speak to half a dozen shrinks. They’d even managed to time it so that he was in an MRI machine as he had a seizure, and still they’d been unable to pin down any one thing as being wrong.

Sensing Stiles’ reluctance, his dad’s hand shifts down to his shoulder and squeezes gently. ‘They’re getting worse, Stiles. I don’t know what they’re like for you, but they’re so scary to watch.’ His words are hushed, almost whispered against Stiles’ head, and he feels his heart clench. ‘They last so much longer now. The other day one lasted for ten minutes. And you never blink, not once, did you know?’

Stiles takes another gulp of cocoa, colder this time, and doesn’t answer.

‘What are they like?’

Stiles screws his eyes shut, tries to think whether or not he should tell his dad the truth.

The thing is, he’d looked it up on the internet before, and a symptom of seizures can be hallucinations. Another thing that can happen is that your body parts look different. And while Stiles knows instinctively that they’re not hallucinations, that there is someone out there he can see the world through, the fact that people do see things? Maybe, if he told, they wouldn’t think he was mad.

He makes a decision and takes a breath. ‘It’s like…like I’m seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. Everything goes dark, and then I’m looking at a tree or person or something, but I’m somewhere else, and I’m someone else.’

His dad shifts suddenly then, jostling Stiles and making the rest of his cocoa slosh around his mug dangerously. ‘You see things?’ he asks Stiles, watching him with careful intensity, and Stiles squirms under his gaze.

‘Yeah,’ he says, reaching behind him to place the mug on the bedside table.

‘Okay, so that’s a new symptom right? That could mean something’s changed?’

Stiles bites his lip and his dad’s eyebrows raise. ‘Stiles. Is this not a new symptom?’

Stiles looks away and shakes his head sheepishly.

His dad groans, runs a hand across his face. ‘Okay, okay, how long?’

Stiles scratches the back of his head, knows there’s no way out of this now. ‘Since the start.’

His dad’s eyes widen, eyebrows higher than before, and then they drop, face turning more serious. ‘Why didn’t you say anything? Did you ever tell a doctor?’

Stiles shakes his head, sees his dad deflate a little, before replying, ‘Didn’t want you to think I was a freak.’ It’s mumbled and quiet, but his dad hears it and bundles Stiles up in his arms.

‘I would never think that, okay?’ he presses more kisses to Stiles’ head, and he wriggles closer, wrapping his own arms round his dad’s waist. ‘I’m going to make an appointment for you as quickly as possible, and we’re going to get this sorted, okay?’

Stiles nods against his dad’s chest, and for maybe a minute and a half, he believes him.

-

His dad manages to get an appointment a week later, giving Stiles the opportunity to have four more seizures. Three at school, one at home. The school always tells his dad, so after each one, he has to tell his dad what he saw (eating lunch in a strange cafeteria, writing notes in a strange classroom, looking at a strange teacher, folding clothes and putting them into different piles in a strange bedroom). The bedroom isn’t actually strange. Stiles has seen it a few times before, identifies it as the other guy’s parents’ room. His dad notes down what he sees in excruciating detail, like the idea that Stiles hallucinates about doing laundry is super interesting.

Okay, so the doctors find it interesting. They take Stiles for another scan, do another ECG, take another blood sample, ask him tons more questions. His dad seems to have already fielded the ‘why not mention this earlier’ question, so at least he’s saved that embarrassment.

His tests are rushed through and while the results come in less than a week, there’s no more good news than before.

‘Mr Stilinski, while Stiles does have symptoms of epileptic seizures, neurologically, there’s nothing wrong with him. I couldn’t in good faith prescribe medicine when all his tests come out clear.’ Dr Tucker is Stiles’ least favorite doctor, if only because he’s seen her the most.

‘He spaces out, hallucinates, sometimes shakes, for minutes at a time every other day, and that doesn’t qualify him for medication?’ His dad’s getting impatient, and Stiles wants to reach out a hand to comfort him. He’s sitting too far away.

‘Stiles is a completely unique case. Symptoms like his are rarely reported even in cases where there is evidence of epilepsy. But when Stiles has seizures, nothing changes in his brain or body at all. That has not happened at all in the history of recorded medicine.’ Her expression softens. ‘It’s not because I have some stick up my ass that I won’t do this. It would be dangerous to give Stiles anything that alters his brain chemistry when there’s nothing physically wrong.’

It used to annoy Stiles, the way adults would talk about him as if he weren’t in the room. He’s pretty used to it by know.

Stiles can recognise the moment that his dad gives up. His body drops and he rubs his fingers into his eyes. ‘Okay,’ he concedes. ‘But if anything suitable comes about will you let us know?’

He rises from his seat and Stiles does the same from his, and Dr Tucker steps towards them. ‘Of course,’ she nods, taking his dad’s hand in hers. ‘And please come back if any of Stiles’ symptoms change.’

The Sheriff nods, and then she’s turning to Stiles. ‘Try not to keep too many more secrets from us now.’ She says it with a smile, but there’s something in her eyes that tells Stiles she knows how to deal with kids way more troublesome than him. He nods warily.

-

Stiles is twelve when he gets into his first fight, and he’s honestly a little surprised it didn’t come sooner. Although maybe ‘fight’ is too generous a word for being beaten up by Jackson.

He’d had a seizure while playing soccer in the playground, and okay, his doctors have recommended that he not play sports while they come so frequently, but he’s twelve, and he’s tired of sitting out all the time, god dammit!

The thing is, this time, he sees the boy in a classroom writing things down on a piece of paper, except Stiles can see in the corner of the paper a neat, slanted name that makes his breath catch and his heart race. Because while he could be wrong, could be misinterpreting, he’s pretty sure he’s just learnt the name of the boy whose head he keeps visiting.

He’s never totally with it when he comes back to himself, but something’s obviously changed now, because he’s sitting in the middle of the playground with Scott’s hand on his shoulder and Jackson shouting at him for being an idiot, and all he can think to say is ‘Derek.’

It at least makes Jackson pause, face screwed up in confusion, before he says, ‘What the hell, Stilinski? What’s wrong with you?’

And yeah, Stiles really can’t answer that, because where would he begin? But his mind is still swimming with Derek, Derek, so he opens his mouth, and out comes, ‘I don’t…Derek?’

Jackson’s never had the best temper, but the way he gets so angry is more than even Stiles can believe. ‘Jesus Stilinski, you’re such a freak!’ he shouts, before swinging a fist down to Stiles’ cheek.

It’s not a very long attack, and while Stiles can’t really defend himself, Scott and the other kids step in to pull Jackson back pretty quickly before the teachers arrive.

As they’re both taken to the principal’s office, Jackson with a hand around each arm, Stiles with a gentle hand against his shoulder, he tries to gather his thoughts together properly, to make them into something other than just ‘his name is Derek.’

Because that’s not the only thing that’s changed. Not only does he know Derek’s name now, but he could also feel the pen in his hand, hear the scratch of it against the paper, smell the ink as it dried, and he could hear the noise of chatter around him. He could feel the steady thump of Derek’s heart and the moderate confusion as he ummed and ahhed over a word.

Stiles couldn’t just _see_ Derek’s world. He could _be_ Derek in Derek’s world.

-

Jackson at least manages to look sheepishly apologetic by the time his and Stiles’ dads arrive, although that may have more to do with the absolutely furious look his dad is carrying. Stiles’ dad is concern mixed with anger, but Mr Whittemore is 100% pure rage.

Jackson gets a two week suspension, and Stiles gets to go home early to watch cartoons, and for a little while, Stiles thinks that maybe there is something like justice in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

Derek’s sitting in class, scribbling down notes from the board and trying to ignore the buzz of noise around him. The teacher stops and explains something about something that Derek can’t quite hear, because his world goes silent. He knows what’s coming, knows the signs well enough to raise a hand cautiously, and he can see Miss Anderson’s face fall as she steps towards him.

The darkness falls moments later, and he’s looking up into the eyes of a boy slightly younger than him, who’s clearly angry. Derek vaguely recognises him as some dick who’s always mean to him, except this is different. Because Derek can feel a hand on his shoulder and wet grass beneath his legs, and he can hear this kid shout ‘You’re such a freak!’

Derek can sense what’s about to happen even before the fist is raised, and he wants to recoil, wants to pull back, but then this isn’t really him, and whoever he’s looking out of clearly has no survival instinct, because the punch hits like a train. Derek can feel himself be thrown back as pain blooms in his cheek, feels another punch fall into his stomach, can hear himself – the boy – whoever – let out a yelp of pain as another punch cracks against his nose before he watches hands pull the kid back. Another boy moves in front of him, one Derek recognises as a friend. There’s noise all around him, and the dark haired boy kneels down, face painted with concern, saying, ‘Stiles, Stiles, are you okay?’

And the boy – Stiles, apparently? – says ‘yeah, Scott, yeah,’ and even to Derek’s ears it wounds fake, but oh god doesn’t it feel it good to hear this boy speak, to know what he sounds like. It’s the last thing he sees before his world goes black again, and he’s back in the classroom.

He’s not in his seat when he comes to, is lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling. His teacher is knelt hesitantly beside him, and as he lifts himself up onto his elbows, he feels something wet on his cheek. He raises a hand, embarrassed that he’s apparently been crying. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it’s the first time at school.

But instead, when he pulls his fingers away, they’re wet with blood. He stares at it, shocked, because there’s no way that happened when he fell out of his chair.

Miss Anderson’s face mirrors his own concern, and she puts a hand under his elbow to guide him to standing. ‘Come on, Derek, I’m going to take you to the nurse.’

Derek nods dumbly, is too busy letting his mind race to take much notice of the kids around who are staring at him. Because Derek’s fourteen, and he’s not an idiot. The boy – Stiles – gets beaten up, and Derek wakes up bloody. That’s not a coincidence.

-

Miss Anderson had told the principal what had happened in class, away where Derek couldn’t hear, and apparently it was serious enough that he called Derek’s parents in. His dad can’t make it but his mom can, and she gets there within the hour. The nurse cleans up the cuts on Derek’s face and reassures him he’ll be fine, and then steers him to the principal’s office where his mom’s already waiting.

She looks so worried when she sees him, and she rises from her chair to pull him into a tight hug. ‘What happened to your face, baby?’ she asks into his hair, and while he can’t answer, he can hug back.

They pull apart and his mom sits back down, and Derek sinks into the chair next to her.

‘Mrs Hale, I have to ask, have there been any changes to Derek’s seizures recently? Has he been put on any medication?’

His mom shakes her head. ‘He’s never been on medication, and his seizures haven’t really changed. They’ve been getting a bit longer, maybe, but nothing too different.’

The principal nods, leans his elbows on the desk. ‘Miss Anderson’s been dealing with Derek’s seizures for nearly a year now, and she says that what happened today was completely unusual. The violent way he seemed to be almost thrown from his chair, the noises he made, like he was in pain, the cuts on his cheek. Is there anything that could have caused this, has anything changed at home?’

His mom shakes her head again, sadly, and she looks at Derek like her world’s collapsing. ‘Nothing’s changed.’ She sighs. ‘I guess we should go back to the doctor’s, eh kiddo?’

Derek nods, because it’s what’s going to happen regardless of anything he says. And the doctors aren’t going to be able to help, but his mom always hates it when he acts like he’s given up on himself.

-

From then on, whenever Derek can see through Stiles’ eyes, he can also hear through his ears and feel what he feels. He can feel Stiles’ dad’s hugs around him, and he can feel when Stiles is scared or happy or lonely.

He watches Stiles brush his teeth, tastes the watery mint as if it’s in his own mouth, and he tries to memorize the boy in the mirror. He’d never really seen him before, caught glimpses in windows but nothing more. Stiles probably just wasn’t that concerned with his appearance, and it had driven Derek mad. Every other day he’d spent looking out of the eyes of some unknown kid, had spent four years watching his world and getting to know his dad and his friends, and he’d had no idea who he was.

Now he drinks in the sight, the buzzed hair and the doe eyes and the moles along his cheek, because this kid, who looks like he’s about twelve, has been as much a part of Derek’s life as his family has.

As his vision goes dark again, he sends a quiet apology to Stiles for invading his life, and wakes up to Laura’s hand tight around his.

He takes a few moments to blink himself awake and feel the carpet beneath him, and then Laura says ‘That one wasn’t violent at all, I thought they were supposed to be violent now?’

Derek sits up, not letting go of Laura’s hand, and says, ‘It depends, I guess.’

Her eyebrows knit together in confusion, as she rubs soothing circles into his back. ‘What on?’

Derek shrugs. ‘I have no idea.’ Which is a lie. If Stiles is in trouble, or running, or jumping, or doing anything active at all, then his seizures are violent. It never used to happen like that, so Derek figures it’s got something to do with no longer just seeing what Stiles sees. In fact, Derek had once watched Stiles attempt to breakdance with the boy he now knows is Scott, complete with attempted head spin, and had been completely still the whole time. (Derek doesn’t know what Stiles looked like while he was dancing, but he’s 99% sure it wasn’t pretty.)

And it’s weird for Derek to be able to finally put a name to the, well, not face, exactly. But still. It’s Stiles. He’s not entirely sure that it even counts as a name, it’s so strange, but it means he can finally stop calling the kid ‘the kid,’ and if nothing else, it flows better in his head.

Laura’s still watching him, and Derek squeezes her hand. ‘I’m okay, Laura. I’m used to it by now.’

It doesn’t stop Laura looking at him sadly, but it’s enough for her to let go of his hand.

-

So maybe Derek gets obsessed. Sue him. Every other day he visits another guy’s head while his family think he might die. He feels like he has a right to try to figure out exactly whose head it is.

So far he’s got that the kid is male, called Stiles, a couple of years younger than him, and judging by his accent, American. Stiles’ dad seems to be a sheriff, but Derek hasn’t been able to look closely enough at his name badge to find out his last name. He once thinks he sees a ‘Stil’ written on a piece of paper in Stiles’ room, that looks like it’s a longer word than ‘Stiles’, and he spends hours on the internet looking up Sheriffs with last names that begin with ‘Stil’. Unsurprisingly, he isn’t able to find much.

He once finds out that Scott’s last name is McCall, but it turns out there are about a thousand Scott McCalls in the US, and he doesn’t really want to get in trouble for trying to track down where a twelve year old lives.

He gets to a point where he starts to think that maybe there is no Stiles, that this is just a symptom of a really rare form of epilepsy. He’d mentioned seeing things, once, four years ago, and a doctor had nodded and said, ‘That can happen,’ and then never mentioned it again.

But then one night he wakes up in Stiles’ bed, shaking and fearful with two strong arms around him and a low voice whispering soft, soothing words into his ear, and there’s something inside him that just knows it’s real, that Stiles is out there somewhere, having a nightmare and being comforted by his dad.

-

Derek meets Kate a year and a half later, and thinks maybe she can help him to lose his Stiles obsession. Having been unable to find out anything about who Stiles was or where he lived, he’d felt totally helpless, watching a world he could never be a part of through the eyes of someone he could never meet.

Kate’s not going to be the one, but she pays Derek attention, and when they’re together, he’s not thinking about Stiles all that much.

He has a seizure once when he’s with Kate, one where Stiles is playing lacrosse, and when Derek gets back Kate is watching him with something akin to horror. Derek stammers out an apology, mortified at the mess he’s made by knocking piles of paper off the desk he’d been sitting at. Kate doesn’t say anything, holds a hand up to stop his pathetic pleas and turns to go, tossing a casual ‘I’ll see you around’ over her shoulder.

When she comes back six days later, he’s too grateful to look into their relationship closely. He lets her take his hand and guide it where she wants, and resolutely doesn’t think about how he feels like he’s somehow betraying Stiles.

It’s when she’s sitting with him in the back of a car, panting and sweaty, that things start to change. Suddenly, completely out of the blue, he’s overcome with a feeling of disgust. When he looks into the night, it lessens, but when he looks at Kate, it comes back strong and insistent, and thoughts start running through his head.

What’s he doing with Kate? Really? She’s so much older than him, why does she even want to be with a fifteen year old? And then, she never really seems like she cares. She takes what she wants and waves Derek goodbye without a second glance. The more he thinks, the more bile starts to rise in his throat, and all of a sudden he just wants to get out of there, away from Kate and all her creepiness. He fumbles with his jeans, puts a hand on the handle to the car door, and says, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ before leaping out before she can respond. He grabs his bike from where it’s stopped by the car and rides it home at a punishing pace, collapsing into bed and ignoring the buzzing of his phone in his pocket.

It feels like he’s dodged a bullet.

-

His seizures don’t change. They remain as frequent as ever, sometimes violent, sometimes not, always awarding him worried looks from his family and strange looks from his classmates. It’s just that now, every few days, when he’s not having a seizure, he’ll feel something new. And maybe new isn’t the right word, because he’s felt hungry before, just never when looking at a pizza with pineapple on. He’s in the cafeteria, trying to decide, when he suddenly really, really wants the pizza, and it isn’t until he sits down that he realises what a dumb decision that was. He picks off the pineapple and wonders what happened.

-

Three weeks after Derek leaves Kate, she sets his house on fire.


	3. Chapter 3

Stiles has gotten used to how different his seizures have become. There was something he almost enjoyed about experiencing the world through Derek’s eyes, getting to know his family, his friends. He grew fond of the sister he found out was called Laura, enjoyed playing with Cora, even relished the time he fell unconscious and opened his eyes to Derek’s mom yelling at him for missing curfew.

He got used to the sound of Derek’s own voice, got to know what Derek loved to do. He loved to cook, loved to read, loved playing board games with his family.

Then Derek starts hanging out with some older girl, Kate, and Stiles doesn’t know what to think about that. Because what’s a twenty-five year old doing hanging out with a fifteen year old? Stiles never sees anything explicit, but he’s sure that Derek and Kate are having sex, and it sends shivers down his spine. Stiles can see the way she looks at Derek, knows that there’s no love there. There’s hardly even affection.

He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees Derek come to his senses and blurt out a nervous ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ and when he doesn’t see Kate for three weeks, he mentally pats Derek on the back for good riddance to bad rubbish.

And then Stiles is packing up from his last lesson at school when he feels his vision grow dark, and he hastily drops back into his seat so he doesn’t fall to the floor.

When he comes back round, there are four teachers stood cautiously nearby, and the classroom has been cleared of the other kids except for Scott, whose eyes are wide and terrified. And Stiles is distraught.

He’s lying on the floor, chairs are scattered around him, and he can feel the beginning of bruises on his arms and legs. His cheeks are wet, his nose is running, and his throat feels hoarse, and he wonders if he’d actually screamed this time. He can feel himself shaking, tries to say something as the teachers start to move around him, putting hands under his arms to lift him up. He manages to choke out a strangled ‘Scott,’ because he wants his best friend right now. Scott jolts and speeds through the desks to kneel down beside him, running his hands over his head before pulling him into a hug.

He lets himself sob into Scott’s neck for a few moments, clutching onto his shirt. A teacher says, ‘Your dad’s on his way, Stiles, come on,’ and Stiles lets himself be pulled to standing and he’s steered to the nurse’s office. Scott hands him his bag when he sits down, and he asks Stiles ‘Do you want me to wait with you?’

Stiles shakes his head and smiles sadly, and Scott says, ‘Text me that you’re all right later?’ and Stiles nods and waves Scott goodbye.

His dad arrives ten minutes later, and Stiles is still shaking, the blanket that’d been pulled around his shoulders having done nothing to stop the tremors. His dad looks so sad, wipes his fingers under Stiles’ eyes to wipe away some of the tears, and says, ‘C’mon kiddo.’

He sits in the car on the way home trying to forget the screams, trying to forget the smell of smoke and the taste of ash, trying to will away the heat he can feel burning through his body.

He tries to forget the terror. The sheer blind panic that he’d felt to his core. He’d seen flames, seen people running, had been running himself. He could feel the hot ground beneath him as he thundered into the woods, faster than Stiles could ever dream of running. He ran, stopped, looked back, and saw the house that he’d become so familiar with engulfed in flames. He’d stepped towards it instinctively, wanting to protect the people in there, and while Stiles knew he didn’t make that decision to step, it had felt like he had. But then an arm was around his shoulders, pulling him back, an arm that he could feel, and he’d looked up into the eyes of Laura.

She’d looked down at him with all the terror he’d felt, had shaken her head, and that was when the fear had turned to despair. That was when he’d felt all of the pain in the world rush through him, like he was watching his mother die all over again.

Stiles was only there for a few more seconds, feeling hot tears spilling down his cheeks as he fell back into Laura’s embrace and watched the world end.

Normally, when he comes back to his own world, it's like blinking, not painful or difficult, just disorientating. When he came back this time? It was like waking up from a nightmare.

-

Over the next few weeks, Stiles sees Derek’s life change dramatically. His whole world turns upside down, and while Stiles can’t get the exact details of what happened, he gets that Derek’s house is gone, and his whole family has died. Except for Laura. Laura’s the only one Stiles sees anymore, and yeah, Stiles mourns. He’d sort of grown up with these people, you know? He’d tasted Derek’s mom’s food, played football with Derek’s dad and brothers, played video games with Cora and babysat Derek’s cousins. He never spent more than a few minutes a day with Derek, but he’d been part of Derek for six years. He’s not as sad as when his mom died, but he still spends a few weeks grieving.

And his heart breaks about a thousand times for Derek. Because he feels what Derek feels, knows how absolutely hopeless he is all the time. For months after the fire, even after Laura and Derek seem to have moved to a different city, Stiles doesn’t hear Derek laugh, doesn’t really see Laura smile, beyond sad smiles of reassurance.

It’s maybe five months later, and Stiles is watching TV with his dad when he has a seizure, groaning as he rests his head back against the couch.

He’s looking at Laura, then, who’s watching him intently and cupping her hands around his face. She looks so sincere, but all that Derek’s feeling is guilt and pain.

‘It wasn’t your fault, okay? Kate was insane, she abused you, and it was not your fault.’

Derek closes his eyes and breathes in and out. Stiles can feel him reach up to hold on to one of Laura’s wrists. Laura presses a kiss to his forehead and Derek’s eyes open again as she pulls him into an embrace.

Stiles feels so so guilty, then, because this is a moment between Derek and his sister, and he doesn’t deserve to have it intruded on by some fourteen year old freak.

But then Laura’s speaking in his ear, and what she says makes Stiles’ heart skip. ‘I’m just glad you weren’t having a seizure when it happened. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

Derek hugs tighter and Stiles’ mind reels, because so far he’s learnt two things from this visit: firstly, that Kate had something to do with the fire, and secondly, that Derek has seizures too.

Which means that maybe, maybe Derek can see Stiles too.


	4. Chapter 4

Derek and Laura’s apartment is small because Laura refuses to use any of the life insurance to pay for it, only paying what she earns from her waitressing job at some sleazy diner three blocks down. Derek offers immediately to try and get himself a job to help her out, but Laura shakes her head defiantly and says it’s far more important that he finishes high school. If things get too bad, she says, they can always dip into the insurance.

So Derek goes to school, goes through the pains of explaining his condition to the principal himself, and hopes like hell he doesn’t have any seizures there in his final couple of years. He’s lucky for a couple of weeks, and his first seizure at school is small, quiet, hardly anyone notices. A curly haired boy named Isaac introduces himself after, asks if he’s okay, and quietly offers to help him with his things.

He walks home with Isaac and feels a little bit lighter at having made his first friend in New York.

The guilt from the fire follows him around like a rain cloud, and it’s months before Laura sits him down and says he can’t go on like this. He gets scared for a moment, thinks she might say that she can’t look after him anymore, before she takes his hands and asks him to tell her what’s wrong.

Derek scoffs, says, ‘You mean, apart from practically my whole family dying in a fire?’

Laura doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, and something in Derek snaps, and he tells her all about Kate.

Laura, for her part, looks absolutely horrified, and while Derek at first thinks she’s disgusted at him, his fears are quickly dissipated as she spits out abuse at Kate.

‘How the hell could she – she’s so fucking sick! And you think it was her? Oh my god, Derek, you tell me where to find her and I’ll rip her fucking throat out!’

Derek makes himself small, and when she looks at him next, her expression softens, and she takes his face in her hands and tells him that she abused him, that it wasn’t his fault, and while Derek doesn’t feel the guilt leave him all together, he feels lighter as Laura holds him tight.

-

Derek has to have check-ups every year, and they are the bane of his existence. He hates them more than the seizures. For about two hours, doctors prod at him, poke at him, connect things to him and scan every part of his body they can find, and every time, they say, ‘We still can’t find anything neurologically wrong. Keep on as you are and come in if anything changes.’

The doctors in New York are no more helpful. One of them flat out accuses Derek of faking his seizures for the attention. He says, ‘You were ten, you wanted attention it got out of hand, right? We put this all to rest now and forget it ever happened.’

Derek’s pissed at that, because he knows his seizures aren’t normal, and he’d love to be able to never speak to a doctor again about them, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to let some guy he’s never met before call him a liar.

Luckily, Laura is beside him, and all but tears the doctor a new one, and Derek gives him a smug smile as they sweep past him on the way out.

She picks up some pamphlets that Derek can’t make out the names of as they go, and he instinctively has a bad feeling about them. Laura with pamphlets is dangerous.

He doesn’t mention it, hopes half-heartedly that she might somehow forget about them, but when they get back, she pulls them out immediately. Derek almost recoils when he sees them.

‘Laura, I do not need therapy!’

She sighs, sits down on the couch heavily. ‘See, I think you do, Der. I know you still blame yourself for what happened. And Kate must have had an impact. It would do you good to talk to someone, I think. It might even help with the seizures.’

Derek runs a hand over his face, can’t quite explain that he’s not sure he wants to lose the seizures, that he likes going and being a part of Stiles’ life. He couldn’t say it without sounding insane. ‘We can’t really afford it, Laura.’

Laura waves a hand dismissively. ‘Sure we can. Let me worry about that.’

Derek can sense a losing battle but still feels like fighting. He’s about to open his mouth to protest when something in the back of his head switches – something that says maybe this would be good, maybe he needs it. Laura raises her eyebrows hopefully, and Derek sighs and concedes.

‘Okay. Book me an appointment. But if it’s too expensive then we’re not doing it.’

Laura’s gleeful and gets her phone out immediately, and before Derek can blink she’s made an appointment for a week’s time. She folds him into a tight hug and he squeezes back slightly harder than necessary. No one has to know.

-

The therapy does help. It’s awful, but it helps. He doesn’t exactly enjoy going through every painful memory he’s ever had, but he comes back from his first few sessions feeling less like a burden. Laura isn’t smug, which helps. She’s just happy.

Derek has a seizure one night, after his fourth session, nearly knocks his plate off the table as he lives through Stiles running to his front door and cursing under his breath, because apparently Stiles has missed his curfew again. Derek sighs internally, thinks to himself that Stiles really should invest in a watch, and then suddenly Stiles stops dead still. He’s halfway up the path to his door, but he makes no effort to step towards it. Stiles breathes raggedly, turns to look behind him. Derek’s really confused, can’t see or hear anything that would have made Stiles stop. But then Stiles speaks, and if Derek weren’t in Stiles’ head, he’s not sure he would have heard it.

‘Derek?’

It’s a harsh whisper, spoken as if Stiles can’t believe he’s saying it himself.

But before Derek has the chance to _freak the fuck out,_ his vision goes black again and he wakes up to Laura’s fingers brushing across his forehead.

‘You okay?’ she asks softly, and all Derek can do is close his eyes and let the memory of how Derek’s name had sounded spoken by Stiles wash over him.


	5. Chapter 5

There’s maybe a 99% chance that Stiles is crazy. Anyone who hadn’t been stuck in Stiles’ head for the last seven years would probably agree, if he told them. But the thing is, running up to his front door and sending prayers up that his dad had fallen asleep in front of the TV, Stiles is sure that Derek’s there.

It’s not quite a voice that he hears, more a sense that he gets, a quiet exasperation that Stiles wouldn’t have felt himself. Stiles is mad at himself, sure, but he’s not _exasperated._

The moment he says Derek’s name, the feeling leaves him, and he’s torn between feeling disappointed that maybe he’d managed to scare Derek off, and happy that he’d been proved right. Well, sort of right. Not in any kind of way that could be quantified.

His thoughts fly out the window when he goes through his front door and is immediately confronted by his angry father.

‘Uh. Hi Dad!’

‘Don’t ‘hi Dad’ me, Stiles. It’s half past eleven, your curfew’s at ten. What the hell?’

Stiles rubs the back of his neck with his hand. ‘I was getting a ride with Danny, and he had to wait for Jackson, who was too busy sucking on Lydia’s face to listen to me complaining about the time.’

‘You could have called, or texted!’

Stiles sighs. ‘My phone died. When I had my seizure last night I was about to plug it in, and it must have slipped my mind.’

His dad’s frown softens, and Stiles is nothing if not opportunistic, so he says, ‘You know, if I had my own car, got my licence, I wouldn’t have to rely on rides from unreliable sources.’

His dad rolls his eyes, turns back towards the kitchen. ‘You can’t get your licence until you’ve been seizure free for two years. You know that, Stiles.’

Stiles follows him. ‘Pssh, technicalities. No one’s going to arrest the sheriff’s son for driving without a licence, right?’

His dad sits at the table and Stiles perches himself on top of it, as his dad laughs. ‘They sure as hell will, because I’d give them all explicit orders to do so.’ He grimaces. ‘I’d rather that than you have a seizure while driving and kill yourself.’

‘What if I never stop having seizures?’         

His dad shrugs. ‘Then you never drive.’

Stiles pouts. ‘Do you realize how unfair it is to tell a fifteen year old boy that he might never drive in his life? Let me have goals, dad!’

‘Your check-up’s only in a month. We can ask the doctors then.’

Stiles deflates a little. ‘Yay. More doctors. Because they’ve been so successful at finding out what’s wrong with me.’

His dad chuckles and rises from his seat, clapping a hand to Stiles’ shoulder. ‘Luck of the draw, kiddo. And don’t think this conversation has distracted me from how late you were tonight. You’re grounded for the week.’

He stalks off down the corridor as Stiles lets out an indignant ‘Hey! Not fair!’ It falls on deaf ears, but the next morning, Stiles is able to negotiate his grounding down to four days.

-

Stiles tries desperately to notice when Derek’s there, to search for the echo of something different in the back of his mind, but either Derek doesn’t have seizures as often as Stiles does, or the echo just isn’t always there.

He catches it once, two weeks later, when he’s practically inhaling a burger and shovelling fries down his neck. It’s a faint feeling of vague disgust, that maybe Stiles should take his time eating and try and maybe savour it for once.

And while Stiles knows that he doesn’t make the prettiest sight right now, he’s definitely not disgusted with himself. Because he’s on his own right now, has no one to be embarrassed in front of, and this is the greatest burger known to mankind. He scoffs at the sensation and, through a mouthful of excellent burger, says, ‘Snob.’

There’s amusement then in his head, and he can’t be sure if it’s his or Derek’s, but he takes it as a win and carries on eating, adding in a few sex noises just to make Derek laugh more.

It isn’t until he’s swallowed the last bite that he realises he just missed a chance to tell Derek who he was. He’s kind of out of options for that. When he’d left his dad after being grounded, he’d written his name, address, phone number and e-mail on about ten pieces of paper and pinned them up around his room.

But that had led to his dad sitting him down a few evenings later and looking at him with such worry that Stiles’ heart nearly broke. ‘Son,’ he’d said, gently, hands on Stiles’ knees. ‘Do you sometimes have trouble remembering who you are? Or where you are?’

And at Stiles’ shocked expression, he’d pressed on. ‘Is it after your seizures? Do you get disoriented, or confused?’ And when Stiles still showed no signs of comprehension, he’d sighed and said, ‘I saw the notes around your room. You have eleven different pieces of paper that say who you are and where you live.’

And Stiles is a sharp thinker. He can’t lie to save his life, but he can at least come up with the lies before he fails at telling them. But with this? Stiles had been stumped. Hadn’t been able to come up with a single excuse for those pieces of paper, and had ended up being condemned by his own silence.

‘You don’t have to be embarrassed, it’s okay. Hell, it’s downright understandable!’

And _then_ Stiles had an idea, and stammered out, ‘No, no, I just read on the internet that it can help stop seizures. It can, like, ground you, pull you back when you’re about to go.’

His dad had smiled sadly and said, ‘Stiles, it’s okay. We can speak to the doctors about it next week, ask them if there’s anything that can help.’

Stiles had taken down the papers that night, not feeling good about how sad his dad had looked. And his dad doesn’t mention it, but Stiles is sure it’s going to come up at his appointment. And Stiles doesn’t know quite how to say ‘I keep pieces of paper with my details on up around my room so when some guy I don’t know has a seizure and ends up in my head he knows how to find me. This is also the same guy whose head I visit when I have a seizure,’ without sounding insane.

Derek doesn’t seem to be going to the same efforts though, and it throws Stiles a little, because he has to know by now that Stiles sees through his eyes. But then maybe Derek’s having the same kinds of problems getting his message across. He looks for clues, tries to see paperwork or street signs, but either Derek needs glasses or you just can’t read as well looking through someone else’s eyes. He admits it’s not a problem that often gets investigated.

-

Stiles’ dad does mention the whole paper thing to Dr Tucker, who seems to find it very concerning. ‘How long after your seizures does it take for you to remember who you are?’ she asks, scribbling notes down furiously.

Stiles sighs, says, ‘It only happened once, for like, a few seconds, and it kinda freaked me out. It hasn’t happened before or since.’

His dad looks at him curiously and Stiles avoids catching his eye.

‘That seems quite drastic for something that only happened once, Stiles,’ Dr Tucker says softly.

‘What can I say, go big or go home,’ Stiles laughs, and even if it doesn’t make either his dad or Dr Tucker feel better, it eases the tension some.

She concludes with the predictable, ‘if that starts to happen again, come right back,’ and then Stiles and his dad head off for a couple of hours of pointless tests that have never come up with anything. This time isn’t any different.

They’re sitting in the car, and Stiles’ dad is poring over the scans, gesturing violently at the air. ‘I just don’t understand!’ he says. ‘There’s never been anything out of the ordinary on any of your tests, and yet you always have seizures! How come nothing ever comes up?’

Stiles shrugs, has heard his dad complain about this a dozen times before. Stiles is pretty sure that he and Derek are some kind of magical soulmates and this is the way the world has decided to connect them, but somehow, he doesn’t think that’ll fly as an explanation.


	6. Chapter 6

Derek figures out that Stiles has just started at high school, because Stiles’ school looks vastly different. It makes sense. Stiles has always seemed a couple of years younger, and Derek’s seventeen now. But he doesn’t really think much of it until he sees Stiles walking up to the school, and seeing the name ‘Beacon Hills High School’ plastered on a sign.

It makes Derek’s heart race and mind reel, because this is exact. Derek can search for this and find this, and maybe find Stiles. He’s excited, sure, but he’s also terrified. Because this could go so wrong. He could look up the school, find that it doesn’t exist, that this really is just a sign of Derek going mad, and where would he go from there? Or he could find that it does exist, maybe that there even is a Stiles there, but that Stiles doesn’t know about him, and that would make him equally crazy. And yeah, maybe he finds the school and finds Stiles and Stiles knows him and it all works out. But knowing Derek’s luck, there’s very little chance of that happening.

Derek’s still not sure how Stiles knows about him, knows his name. All he can think is that Stiles must have the same seizures he has, that he can see through Derek’s eyes the way he can see through Stiles’.  But the doctors always go on about how Derek’s seizures are completely unique, that there’s no one else in the world who has all the symptoms of epilepsy but with no neurological problems. Maybe their doctors aren’t really into communication.

Derek decides he’s going to look it up later.

-

He ends up looking up Beacon Hills six days later, partly because he’s scared of what he’s going to find, and partly because Laura’s hogging the computer for her online college courses. When he finally sits down and tentatively types in ‘Beacon Hills High School’, Laura’s immediately behind him and asking ‘What are you searching for that for, Der? You upping and moving to Cali on me?’

Derek laughs her away, mumbles something about his school setting up a pen pal program with the students at Beacon Hills, and she moves on quickly. But it’s right there staring at him: Beacon Hills exists, it’s in California, and, oh yeah, _it exists._

He skims through some information on the school and the town, doesn’t see anything about the sheriff’s department that he knows Stiles’ dad works for. He searches for ‘Beacon Hills Sheriff’ and google immediately throws up a picture he recognises, captioned ‘Sheriff John Stilinski’. He’s smiling in the photo, kind eyes and a broad smile that Derek has seen a hundred times before.

Derek knows Stiles’ mom isn’t around, and guesses that, because the sheriff still wears his wedding ring, it’s because she died. But he knows Stiles’ dad well, knows how caring he is, how funny he is, how strict he can be when he needs to be. It still reminds Derek of his own dad, and he wonders, absent-mindedly, if Derek’s mom ever reminded Stiles of his.

Derek pulls up facebook and types in Stiles’ name, holding his breath as he waits for the results to load. Predictably, there’s only one result, and while Derek doesn’t know Stiles’ face as well as he knows Scott’s or Stiles’ dad, he knows instantly that the boy in the picture is Stiles.

He lets out the breath, leans back in his chair and watches the screen for a few more moments, unsure of what to do next. He closes his browser without doing anything, and promptly has a seizure.

-

Derek doesn’t send a friend request, or a message. On the days when he doesn’t have a seizure, he’ll find himself going to Stiles’ profile, flicking through the photos that he’s able to see, drinking in everything he can.

He’s not sure why he doesn’t do anything. As in, he actually has no clue. Because this is his Stiles, and his Stiles knows about Derek, and wants Derek to find him. About once a month, when Derek is in Stiles’ head, something will happen that will make Stiles aware that Derek’s there. And if he’s alone, Stiles will blurt out all the information he can about how to get in touch. Name, address, phone number, everything.

And while Derek wants to, desperately wants to get to know the boy whose head he’s been visiting every couple of days for the last eight years, there’s something inside him that’s telling him not to. That’s telling him not to break whatever fragile thing he has. That he could find Stiles tomorrow and the whole thing could somehow collapse in front of him.

So he keeps quiet, hopes Stiles doesn’t see him stalking him on facebook, and tries everything he can not to let Stiles know who he is.


	7. Chapter 7

So Stiles is kinda pissed at Derek. He’s been blurting out information on how to find him for nearly three months, is almost certain that Derek had heard him, and yet he’s not been in contact once. More than that, on four different occasions, when Stiles has had a seizure, he’s found himself looking through Derek’s eyes at his own facebook profile. Which means that Derek’s found him, but doesn’t want to talk to him. But is also somehow still obsessed with him.

Stiles has never had the best self-esteem, and being sort-of rejected by the guy you’re telepathically linked to doesn’t help. And when he’s angry at Derek, his seizures become more problematic. There’s something about his frustration that makes Stiles more violent while he’s unconscious, that makes them last longer than before. More than once he wakes up with a cut on his head from where he’d apparently thrown himself from his chair, and that’s also new.

His dad talks about taking him back to the doctor, with another hesitant, ‘You’re not having trouble remembering who you are again, are you?’ and so Stiles has another battle to fight, trying to stop him rushing off to make the first appointment available.

Once, though, Stiles sees a word that looks like ‘Hill’ after Derek’s name, so he spends three or four hours searching for Derek Hill, Laura Hill, Hill Family Fire. It doesn’t come up with anything, and Stiles nearly throws his laptop in frustration at the fact that Derek’s the one with all the information, but Stiles is the one who’d actually do something about it.

He’s already turned seventeen by the time he has a chance to say anything to Derek about it. It’s not as satisfying as saying it to his face, but when he gets a vague thrum of fear watching the most absolutely unscary sequel to Saw ever, he says, ‘You’re a jackass, you know. I know you know me and I know you’re ignoring me. If you aren’t going to talk to me, at least get the hell out of my head.’

It’s not nice to say, and Stiles knows it must have stung. But that was the point. It’s not fair if Stiles is the only one feeling bad.


	8. Chapter 8

Derek’s nineteen, okay. He can take being called a couple of names. And it had been unexpected, sure, but you sure as hell hear a lot worse at college parties, so Derek can take it.

He watches Stiles’ life through his eyes and through facebook, and he figures that he’s got a good thing going on there in Beacon Hills. He’s got a great dad, a nice house, a few good friends. And the thing about Derek? He attracts trouble. He’d managed to get his whole family killed. He doesn’t want to think about the damage he could do to Stiles, however unintentionally.

Derek gets into NYU, but is told it’s best if he keeps living with Laura, because of his condition. He pretends to be annoyed, but is actually pretty happy, because Laura’s as important to him as the sun is, and he’s not quite ready to say goodbye to another member of his family yet.

He doesn’t really mourn the parties he doesn’t get to go to. Turns out even college kids don’t have too much time for someone with Derek’s condition. Isaac goes to NYU with him, scopes out the parties that are worth going to and looks after him when he has seizures on campus. He makes a couple of new friends, Erica and Boyd, invites them back to his apartment a few times, feels like he actually has a chance at normal.

When he first has a seizure in front of Erica, he wakes up to her watching him curiously. While Isaac’s getting him a glass of water, she says, ‘I used to get those. It was a childhood thing, so it stopped when I was about fifteen, but y’know. I get it.’

Derek smiles, doesn’t want to spoil things by telling her that she probably doesn’t, that no one does.

And then that voice is back in his head again, saying that there is someone out there who does in fact get it, if Derek would just stop being a coward. He shakes the feeling, concentrates on where he is in the present.

-

Derek seizes and sees Stiles celebrating his eighteenth birthday, and feels a bit better about being in love with him.

He’s just at home, in a room with Scott, Lydia, Allison, Danny and Jackson, and they’re all drinking beers and laughing, with a big banner across the wall reading ‘Happy 18th Birthday!’

Stiles stops laughing and gets up to excuse himself, going into the kitchen and shutting the door behind him. He speaks quietly, obviously not wanting the others to hear, and says, ‘Derek. Seriously. Quit fighting this.’

Derek huffs, and he can feel Stiles twist his mouth in amusement. ‘Yeah buddy,’ Stiles says. ‘And whatever reason you have for avoiding me, it’s garbage. Come. Find. Me.’

Derek feels himself slipping away from Stiles, but has already made up his mind by the time he wakes up on Isaac’s dorm room floor.

He can’t get to his computer until later that night, and even then he has to wait for Laura to finish sending some essay first.

But just before bed, almost shaking with anticipation, he types Stiles’ name into the facebook search bar, takes a few moments to take some deep breaths, and sends a friend request.

Before he has time to think, he logs out, closes the browser and shuts down his computer. He bids goodnight to Laura, throws himself into bed, and doesn’t sleep at all.

-

He doesn’t have any classes until 10am the next day, so he has time to check his facebook when he wakes up. He holds his breath until the page loads, and finds not only that Stiles has accepted his friend request, but has sent him about a dozen messages.

He clicks through them slowly, reads them slowly, as if worried about breaking some kind of spell.

 _23:48 -_ **Stiles:** Holy shit

 _23:48 -_ **Stiles:** Holyyyyyyyyyy fucking shiiiiiiit

 _23:49 -_ **Stiles:** Shit!!!!

 _23:49 -_ **Stiles:** Derekkk!!!!

 _23: 52 -_ **Stiles:** Drek I may be al ittle bit drink

 _23:53 -_ **Stiles:** ok I still cannot belliebe that you are really reall

 _23:55 -_ **Stiles:** i thought I was maaaad, LOCO lol

 _23:56 -_ **Stiles:** but mnot I’m a ge n i US

 _23:57 –_ **Stiles:** scotty wwait one sec

 _23:59 –_ **Stiles:** LOl I typed insteaaad of said HAHAHAhahaA

 _08:33 –_ **Stiles:** oh god. oh god Derek I’m sorry

 _08:35 –_ **Stiles:** I may have had too much to drink last night

 _08:36 –_ **Stiles:** And got pretty excited when I saw your request

 _08:37 –_ **Stiles:** I’m really hoping you haven’t changed your mind about all this??

 _08:38 –_ **Stiles:** I’m reaaally sorry!!!

Derek smiles, can’t help himself, runs a hand across his face before he types out a reply.

 _09:12 –_ **Derek:** You had a good birthday, I’m guessing?

He sits back in his chair and watches the screen, not quite believing that he’s actually talking to Stiles. That Stiles is real, that he knows who Derek is, that Derek isn’t as insane as he’d once thought.

‘Hey babe,’ Laura’s voice floats through the living room, and Derek darts forward to minimise the window.

‘Hey Laur,’ he calls back, fingers tapping on his thigh as she pours out a glass of juice and makes her way over to him.

‘Watcha doin’?’ she asks, looking at the empty desktop in front of him.

He looks up at her and she quirks an eyebrow in amusement. ‘I’m not doing anything,’ he says. ‘Was about to start writing an essay.’

She laughs, runs a hand fondly through his hair. ‘Keep the rude videos for the night time, Der-bear.’

Derek splutters as she walks back to their kitchenette, manages a ‘I wasn’t!’ It’s not enough to stop Laura’s laugh.

Derek purses his lips and glares at her as she slips a couple of slices of bread into the toaster. ‘Oh hey,’ she says, pulling the butter from the fridge. ‘Isaac said you had a seizure last night?’

Derek nods absently, watching the frozen wallpaper of his family at their last reunion. It was one of the few reasons he’d actually been grateful for facebook after the fire. For so long there’d been condolence after condolence on his profile, and it had nearly made him sick. But when he can look back through the photos of his family, of his parents’ thirtieth anniversary, of Christmases and birthdays and Halloweens, he’s grateful they had it at all.

‘That’s the second one in two days, right?’

‘Um, yeah. So?’

Laura shoots him a look. ‘ _So,_ that’s a change right? That means you should go back to the doctor.’

Derek groans. ‘Oh god, Laura, please don’t make me go back.’

Laura sighs. ‘Derek, if they’re getting worse –‘

‘They’re not getting worse, okay? I’m sure it’s just a one off.’

‘Derek, I know you’ve all but given up on sorting out your seizures, but I honestly think there’s a chance they might be able to come up with a solution.’

Derek shakes his head defiantly. ‘It’s been nine years. If they couldn’t do anything when I was ten, what makes you think they’re going to be able to do anything now?’

She smiles sadly, walks to him and squeezes his shoulder. ‘If they start coming more frequently, tell me, and we’ll go to the doctor. And don’t think about not telling me, because I will find out, and there will be hell to pay.’

Derek rolls his eyes, shrugs her off with a fond smile. There’s an odd sound from his computer then, and Derek looks around in confusion.

Laura snorts. ‘You got a facebook message, dummy,’ she says before wandering back to her bedroom.

When her door has closed and she’s silent for a few more moments, Derek opens the internet again, and clicks on Stiles’ message. Because, yeah, he’d been anxious before. But now he’s spoken to Stiles, and he’s desperate for more.

 _09:18 –_ **Stiles:** Yeah man. Sorry again for the drunken messages. No hard feelings? I’m all the better for hearing from you though! 3 years though? Why the hold up?

Well, Stiles is nothing if not upfront.

 _09:19 –_ **Derek:** no hard feelings. And it was actually closer to 2 years

 _09:20 –_ **Stiles:** that’s your defence? It could use some work

 _09:22 –_ **Derek:** shouldn’t you be at school?

 _09:22 –_ **Stiles:** way to knock a man down. Nope! Hangover day off!

 _09:23 –_ **Derek:** your dad’s okay with that?

 _09:24 –_ **Stiles:** I also had a seizure this morning, and that’s real good for the sympathy vote

 _09:26 –_ **Derek:** ah. What did you see?

 _09:26 –_ **Stiles:** chill, nothing exciting, you brushing your teeth

 _09:30 –_ **Derek:** this is so weird

 _09:32 –_ **Stiles:** you’re telling me

 _09:33 –_ **Stiles:** how long have you been having seizures for?

 _09:34 –_ **Derek:** nearly 10 yrs. You?

 _09:35 –_ **Stiles:** same. Started when I was 8, like three months after my mom died

 _09:36 –_ **Derek:** I’m sorry. About your mom. I kinda guessed but I never knew

 _09:37 –_ **Stiles:** it’s okay. I’m sorry about your family.

 _09:37 –_ **Derek:** thanks.

 _09:38 –_ **Derek:** what was the first thing you saw?

 _09:39 –_ **Stiles:** I think you were running through the woods with laura and your dad

 _09:39 –_ **Stiles:** freaked me out

 _09:39 –_ **Stiles:** you?

 _09:41 –_ **Derek:** you were watching tv with your dad and scott.

 _09:42 –_ **Derek:** shit, I have to leave for class, sorry

 _09:43 –_ **Stiles:** no problem man. Talk later?

 _09:43 –_ **Derek:** sure

 _09:44 –_ **Stiles:** :)

Derek closes the page and darts around, grabbing his stuff together hurriedly, glad he’d packed up most of his things the night before. He shouts a goodbye to Laura as he heads out the door, mind still almost entirely on his conversation with Stiles.


	9. Chapter 9

To say that Stiles is happier than he’s been in his whole life is an understatement. He’s practically hanging from the ceilings he feels so light, and his hangover feels like a dim and distant memory. He jumps around the kitchen as he makes his lunch, bouncing from cupboard to cupboard like he’d done before he started taking Adderall.

‘Kid, you could at least try to keep up the sick act,’ his dad says from behind him, and Stiles spins round, grin still plastered on his face.

‘Daddio! Good to see ya pops!’

His dad grimaces. ‘Ah jeez, what’s got you in such a good mood?’

Stiles steps towards his dad and puts his hands on his shoulders. ‘Can’t a guy just be in a good mood?’

‘A guy can be in a good mood. But you haven’t been this happy since they started showing pokemon reruns on Bravo.’ He pauses. ‘Oh god, they haven’t started showing pokemon reruns on Bravo again have they? I just got my Saturday mornings back!’

‘Calm down pops, nothing like that.’ Stiles takes his hands away and grabs a glass of juice to pass to his dad. ‘I’m just happy.’

‘Well, all right then. I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Just remember that you’ve got the doctors next week.’

‘Ah Dad, way to kill my mood.’

‘Sorry kiddo.’ He walks past Stiles and drops a hand onto his shoulder. ‘We all gotta come back down to Earth sometime.’

-

Stiles can only sense that Derek’s there when he’s having strong feelings about whatever Stiles is experiencing. Disgust, elation, depression. They sit there at the back of Stiles’ head and let him know that Derek’s watching, voicing his opinion, however unintentionally.

When he’d been sat with his friends on his birthday, happy and relaxed and mellow, a wave of affection had suddenly swept over him. Now Stiles loves his friends a lot, of course he does. But this feeling hadn’t come from him. There had been something else there, something deeper, more intimate. And Stiles knew it was Derek, knew it was Derek’s affection for him running through him.

Derek had known about Stiles for years, known his name and how to find him, and he’d done nothing. Stiles didn’t sense Derek often, but when he did, and when he could, he’d try to convince Derek to take that step and contact him. He’d say, ‘Come on man, don’t make me feel like a freak talking to myself,’ or ‘you’re a real ass, you know?’ He’d say ‘you could give me a clue? Charades? Pictionary?’ and had once tried, ‘think positive thoughts if you’re west coast, negative if you’re east.’

Derek’s blatant refusal had hurt. And it had screwed up Stiles’ seizures. And as happy as he was to finally, properly speak to Derek, he was going to get to the bottom of why he’d been so determined not to speak to Stiles.

Derek’s obviously good at evasion. But boy oh boy, if he thinks he can evade Stiles on a mission, he’s got another thing coming.

-

 _14:09 –_ **Derek:** I’ve been trying to come up with what to say all day, but haven’t really been able to

 _14:10 –_ **Derek:** I’m not good at this sort of thing

 _14:10 –_ **Derek:** I’d normally ask Isaac for advice, but he’d probably get me sectioned if I explained

The message comes through when Stiles is only an hour into his Netflix binge, but he smiles fondly when he sees it.

 _14:12 –_ **Stiles:** You’re not good at talking to the guy whose head you visit every other day? Didn’t they teach you that in school?

 _14:13 –_ **Stiles:** I do have an idea though. You could tell me why you waited so long to speak to me

 _14:13 –_ **Stiles:** Just a thought ;)

 _14:16 –_ **Derek:** that’s not really what I had in mind

 _14:17 –_ **Stiles:** Just tryna help!

 _14:18 –_ **Stiles:** you could try telling me about yourself?

 _14:20 –_ **Derek:** pretty sure you know it all already

 _14:21 – ­_ **Stiles:** nope! I mean how much do you know about me?

 _14:24 –_ **Derek:** okay then? I live with my sister in new York, go to nyu, and I major in history

 _14:25 –_ **Stiles:** thanks for filling me in on everything I coulda figured out from ur fb profile

 _14:26 –_ **Derek:** I said I wasn’t good at this

 _14:26 –_ **Stiles:** no shit. Okay, what’s ur favorite color?

 _14:28 –_ **Derek:** blue?

 _14:31 –_ **Stiles:** do you not know?

 _14:31 –_ **Derek:** apparently not

 _14:33 –_ **Stiles:** don’t worry about it. Baby steps. How was your day?

 _14:35 –_ **Derek:** not great. Had a seizure in a lecture (you watch too much Netflix)

 _14:36 –_ **Stiles:** but you only had one last night? Do you always get them that often?

 _14:39 –_ **Derek:** I used to get them two or three times a week? This is really recent

 _14:40 –_ **Stiles:** huh

 _14:41 –_ **Derek:** what’s huh?

 _14:41 –_ **Stiles:** nothing, I guess. Just keep an eye on that

 _14:41 –_ **Derek:** thanks mom

 _14:44 –_ **Stiles:** WOAH, was that a joke? Did you just tell a joke?? Dude

 _14:45 –_ **Derek:** don’t get used to it


	10. Chapter 10

‘I told you I’d find out. And I found out. So pack your bags, we’re going to the doctors.’

Derek sighs, closes his book. ‘Why do I need to pack my bags to go to the doctors?’

Laura crosses her arms across her chest. ‘Because you’re going to be there for a really long time after I try to kill you for not telling me you had another seizure.’

‘It’s not a big deal, Laura, seriously. They’re not going to care that they got slightly more frequent for less than a week.’

Laura pinches the bridge of her noise, and for a moment Derek could swear he’s watching his mother. ‘If they stay like this for two more weeks, then we’re going in.’

Derek senses a losing battle, says, ‘Fine,’ and makes a vow to himself to scope out whichever of his friends is snitching on him.

-

It takes him a couple of months to figure out the mole, but his seizures have stopped being so frequent, so it’s not such a pressing matter.

Somehow, he doesn’t expect it to be Erica. She’s always seemed too much ‘on his side’. But then she looks at him sympathetically and says, ‘I know better than anyone how important it is to talk about changes. However small. If it’s nothing, then it’s nothing. Better safe than sorry, right?’

Derek doesn’t know what causes him to say what he does next, but he’s had ten years of lying, and it feels good to finally tell the truth for once. And Erica’s one of his closest friends. She’d believe him. Besides, now he has proof. Now he has Stiles’ messages.

He takes a deep breath, and says, ‘The thing is, when I have seizures, they’re not ordinary seizures.’

Erica flaps a hand dismissively. ‘I know, I know, you’re a neurological anomaly.’

Derek shakes his head, looks around at the mostly empty library before continuing. ‘Every time I have a seizure, I end up looking out through the eyes of this kid from California.’ She lifts an eyebrow, either very confused or very unimpressed. ‘I know how crazy this sounds, but it’s true. He’s called Stiles, and he has seizures too. He sees through my eyes. I can see his life, his friends, his family. He can sense when I’m there, sometimes.’

Erica leans forward, takes his hands in hers. ‘Derek, you’re not making a lot of sense right now.’

‘Hold on, I’ll show you,’ he says, pulling away and reaching into his bag to pull out his phone. He’d been reluctant about downloading facebook onto his phone, was worried it would lead to bad habits, but he’d wanted to be able to message Stiles more easily.

Except his phone isn’t in his bag. He roots around some more before giving up. ‘Okay, if we can just find a computer then I can show you.’

He stands up to look for a spare one, but Erica puts a hand on his wrist, and says, ‘Let’s walk back to yours and you can show me on your computer.’

-

When they get back to Derek’s, Erica makes her excuses, something about promising a skype session with her sister, and she leaves Derek confused at the door. ‘But you can show me this later, okay?’ she says, quietly, a hand on his arm.

And Derek knows that tone of voice, knows how deep the concern through it runs, and he feels like he’s made a mistake telling Erica about Stiles.

When he gets to his room, he finds his phone still charging, curses his forgetfulness, and opens facebook.

He frowns at the screen as it throws up an error message, and he sits in front of the computer to see if he has any more luck there.

Another error message comes up, and he curses under his breath as he sees the email he’s received, something about a load of accounts being compromised, and his has been disabled until they can figure out the source.

Derek sighs, wishing he’d swapped numbers with Stiles beforehand. He thinks briefly about setting up a new account, just to get Stiles’ number, but before he can, the door swings open and Laura sweeps through the apartment.

‘Hey Der,’ she says, sitting on the armchair nearest the computer. He swivels around to face her, his smile faltering when he sees her expression.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks.

Laura reaches a hand out to Derek, drops it on his knee and squeezes affectionately. ‘I spoke to Erica today. She said you told her some interesting things.’

And Derek’s not an idiot, knows Laura’s tells almost as well as his own. Right now? Right now, her face says, ‘I’m going to help you whether you like it nor not.’

And Derek knows that what he said was insane, that it’d be nearly impossible to believe without living through it. And Derek can’t really prove it right now.

He swallows. ‘Oh yeah? What did she tell you?’

‘You said ages ago that you see things when you have seizures, didn’t you?’ She’s watching him closely, trying to see his response. He waits for a moment before nodding slowly. ‘And that’s normal. Totally. But Derek, seeing through someone else’s eyes, living their life? That’s not normal.’

Derek’s not sure what his response ought to be. Doesn’t know if he can play it off as a joke, or if it would be better to own up to it.

But her expression’s so sincere, so honest. ‘Laura, nothing’s normal about my seizures,’ is what he settles on, rubbing a hand across the stubble on his chin.

‘What about the boy? The boy you see?’

Derek sighs, accepting his loss. ‘I don’t see him. I see through his eyes.’

‘Okay, what about him?’

‘His name’s Stiles.’

‘Derek, that’s not a normal name.’

‘I know.’

‘What were you going to show Erica about him?’

‘It was a facebook conversation, but something happened and my account’s been disabled.’ He rubs his fingers against his eyes, because this is not what he wanted to happen.

‘And you don’t have his number.’ It’s not a question. ‘And he sees your life the same way you see his.’ Another statement.

Derek nods. ‘Maybe, if you let me go on your facebook, I can find his profile on yours?’

Laura shakes her head. ‘Derek, you’ve got to see this from my perspective. This sounds completely insane, and I’m worried about you.’

And Derek knows what she’s got planned, hastily says, ‘Seriously Laura, I’m fine. Just wait till my facebook comes back and I’ll show you. Please, just hold on for a bit.’

Laura takes Derek’s hand from where it’s now clutched around her wrist and holds it gently. ‘I’ve already spoken to Dr Singh, and she says she can see you right away. Just to make sure you’re okay.’

‘Laura, please, I’m fine, please.’

She ignores him and stands, moving towards his bedroom. Derek follows quickly, sees her open his wardrobe and pull out clothes before stuffing them in a bag she pulls out from under Derek’s bed.

Derek panics, because Laura isn’t planning that they pop in for a quick appointment. She’s planning that Derek’s going to be in the hospital for a while. He grabs clothes out of the bag and throws them into the bottom of the wardrobe. ‘I don’t need to go to the hospital, Laura.’

She huffs, picks up the clothes again. ‘Stop acting like a child.’

‘Stop treating me like one!’

She stops the packing, comes to stand directly in front of Derek. And Laura’s smaller than him by about a head, now, but Derek’s still intimidated. ‘I’ve spent the last ten years of my life worrying about you Derek. I know when I’m worrying unnecessarily. But this is different. What you’re saying, it doesn’t make any sense, and you seem to believe it so strongly. You go to the hospital, they do some tests, you stay in for a few days while they work stuff out.’ She puts her hands on his shoulders and says, ‘At least it’ll stop me worrying about you.’

Derek drops his head and sinks to the bed, resting his elbows on his knees and wringing his hands. ‘I’m not insane,’ he says, quietly.

Laura wraps an arm around his shoulders and his head rests against her stomach. ‘In which case,’ she says into his hair, ‘you’ll be back before you know it.’


	11. Chapter 11

Stiles and Derek have been talking for maybe two months, and it still makes Stiles joyful to finally be speaking to him. They talked about nothing and everything, from what happened each day to how it had felt losing loved ones.

It’s nice to finally be able to speak to someone who understood, who knows what it’s like and doesn’t judge. And while the seizures don’t change or lessen at all, Stiles finds that he stops minding them so much. It gets easier and easier to tell when Derek is there, and Derek can tell when Stiles is there more and more often.

And Stiles would still wake up trembling, crying, with his dad’s arms around him and a sea of concerned faces, but somehow it didn’t matter so much. Because he could go after and tell Derek to go easy on the weights, to maybe try working out with a shirt on next time.

He feels closer to Derek than he does to Scott, almost closer than he does to his dad. They’ll watch Netflix together, sending sarcastic comments to each other over facebook. Derek helps Stiles with his homework, Stiles helps Derek with his.

Within a month, Stiles knows that when Derek senses him there, he senses the same affection that Stiles had felt on his eighteenth birthday. And Stiles can sense that affection just through the messages, knows that they’re both on the same page, a page they don’t really want to discuss.

Stiles doesn’t push things, remembers how tentative Derek had been about getting in touch in the first place. For the same reason, he also doesn’t ask to exchange numbers, something which he really regrets when he logs in to find Derek’s account has disappeared.

He searches for his name, doesn’t come up with anything, and wonders for a moment if Derek has had enough and blocked him.

He shakes the thought away, because he doesn’t actually believe that. They’ve come too far, been too intricately interwoven to just cut the other off.

He spends a full twenty-five minutes worrying and clicking. He searches for Laura’s name, comes very close to sending her a message before realising he’d have to explain how he knows Derek. It’s not really a conversation he feels like having. Besides, it’s not like he can exactly lose track of Derek, really.

And then his dad is pulling him away for school, and for once, Stiles actually goes in hoping to have a seizure.

-

He doesn’t have one until the next evening when he’s watching TV with his dad, and he has to really try to hold it together when he wakes up, because Derek’s in the hospital, and _what the fuck._

His concern must show, though, because his dad is lifting him gently and urging him to bed, saying ‘Bad one, huh?’ When Stiles nods, he says, ‘Get changed for bed, I’ll grab you some water.’

-

After a week, Derek’s still in the hospital, and Stiles can tell that he’s miserable. He’s pretty sure Derek didn’t have an accident, because Stiles doesn’t feel any pain when he’s in Derek’s head. And maybe it has something to do with Derek’s seizures – maybe they’re happening more frequently, maybe they’re getting more violent. Stiles knows he’s still having them, because he feels that sweet affection a few times, running through him. Derek’s still there and he still sort-of loves Stiles.

It isn’t until Stiles seizes and wakes up speaking to a therapist that he figures it out. 

‘You shouldn’t be angry at your sister, Derek. She’s trying to help.’

Stiles can feel Derek’s frustration as he sits in silence, can feel where his arms are across his chest. He tries to flood Derek’s head with affection, hoping it might ease the tension in his shoulders.

The therapist sighs, writes something down on her pad. ‘You’re not going to gain anything from refusing to see her.’ And _that’s_ new. Laura is Derek’s world. He’d be mad at her, but he wouldn’t ignore her completely, would he?

When she still gets no reply, she asks, ‘You’ve been speaking to a counsellor for over three years, Laura tells me. Did you ever speak with your counsellor about what you see?’

It clicks then, in Stiles’ head. Derek’s told someone about Stiles, someone that doesn’t believe him, and now he’s in hospital and not allowed to leave.

‘Tell me about Stiles,’ the therapist says, and Derek’s gaze fixes coldly on her.

‘No,’ Derek says, the sound so gruff that it makes Stiles start.

‘He’s the boy you say you see when you have seizures. Who can also see you when you have seizures, right?’

When Derek says nothing, she continues. ‘I know you believe that we think you’re insane, that we’re somehow out to get you. But we’re really not.’

Stiles is overwhelmed with Derek’s disbelief, and he snorts, thinks ‘you’re really not helping yourself, buddy. If you wanna get out of here, you should probably play along.’

So far, the only way Stiles and Derek have been able to communicate is by feeling, or speaking out loud to an empty room. But Stiles gets a flash of understanding from Derek then, and Stiles wonders if maybe he can give more than just emotion to Derek when he has seizures.

He feels Derek shift in his chair, and he takes in a breath before saying, ‘Then what are you trying to do? What do you think?’

She smiles, and Stiles doesn’t have to be in Derek’s head to know that he’s annoyed that he’s just handed her some kind of victory. ‘We’re trying to help. And personally? I think that you experienced hallucinations when you had seizures, which is normal, but that when you experienced the trauma of your family’s death, one of the ways you coped with that was by projecting a persona onto your hallucinations.’

If you’d asked Stiles ten minutes ago what his least favorite thing to be called was, he probably wouldn’t have said ‘a hallucination’. Being in Derek’s head is always a learning experience. He can feel where Derek’s nails are digging into his skin, and Stiles wills him not to accidentally hurt himself.

The therapist leans forward. ‘This isn’t unusual for sufferers of trauma, but it’s not a behaviour that’s encouraged. You shouldn’t live in a pretend world.’

Stiles wonders if this lady has only ever therapized children before, because she sounds like an overly patient nanny dealing with a three year old that’s drawn on the walls.

Stiles doesn’t have too much longer to feel excessively angry, though, because then he’s drawing back and waking up in his seat in Economics. Scott’s moved his chair up beside him, is tracing patterns onto the back of his hands while the class mostly carries on around them.

He smiles at Scott, shakes himself off and gestures that he’s fine, that Scott can go back to his work. He takes a drink of water and feigns interest in the lesson. By the time the bell rings ten minutes later, Stiles has a plan.

-

Being the sheriff’s kid isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it has its perks. Sure, his dad works crappy hours for kinda crappy pay, sure, the whole town is always watching his dad to make sure he doesn’t slip up morally, and sure, there’s no way he’d ever be able to get into any kind of trouble without his dad finding out immediately. But with that comes not only a wealth of knowledge about police procedure, but also his dad’s old deputy badge that he’d been given as a toy when his dad got promoted.

‘Yo, Daddio,’ Stiles says, sliding in to sit beside him at the kitchen table. ‘You are looking lovely today!’

His dad looks up from his paperwork and says ‘What do you want, Stiles?’

Stiles plasters mock outrage onto his face, says, ‘I cannot believe you would think I would pay you a compliment just to get something from you! I am a genuinely nice person!’

His dad raises an eyebrow, face straight. ‘Okay. So what do you want?’

Stiles puffs out his cheeks before saying, ‘Well, since you asked – I was actually thinking about checking out the NYU campus this weekend.’

His dad’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. ‘Why the sudden interest in NYU? You haven’t mentioned it before?’

Stiles shrugs. ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, it seems like it would be a fresh start, you know? Besides, it’s a good school.’

‘Ookay,’ his dad says slowly. ‘I can’t drive you to New York, kid.’

Stiles shakes his head, says, ‘No no, I was actually going to fly out. They’re letting prospective students stay in dorms for the weekend, and then I’d fly back Monday morning.’

‘Uh huh, and how are you planning to pay for that?’

‘Well, dad, you know how I have zero social life and never go out? Turns out I’ve got quite the allowance build up.’

His dad is watching him with disbelief, drops a pen down to the table. ‘You wanna spend your whole allowance on a trip to visit a college halfway across the country?’ When Stiles nods, he sighs and says, ‘I’ll pay for one flight, you pay for the other.’ Stiles is about to throw his arms around him in glee, when he adds, ‘And Mrs McCall’s okay with this?’

Stiles bites his lip. ‘Actually, I was planning to go alone.’

His dad’s eyes grow wide momentarily, before returning to normal as he says, ‘Ah, in which case, no, you can’t go.’

‘But Dad, you just said –‘

‘Stiles, you are not going to spend a weekend getting on a plane and wandering around New York on your own. What if you have a seizure?’

‘I have my MedicAlert bracelet, and they’re not that bad!’

‘No, Stiles.’

‘Dad, please-‘

‘No.’

Stiles sighs, rubs his hands across his face. ‘I can’t always be supervised you know. I have to go places by myself. And I do go places by myself, all the time! I have to grow up sometime.’

He can see his dad falter, see the cogs working in his brain as he makes up his mind. There’s about a minute of silence before he sighs, and Stiles knows he’s won. ‘Because I’m 99% sure you’d go even if I told you not to, I’m going to let you. But!’ he says just as Stiles is about to leap from his seat, ‘I want you to text or call every two hours so that I know you’re okay, and to tell me if you have a seizure. And if you have a bad one, to call an ambulance and get help.’

Stiles nods, says, ‘Thank you so much, Dad!’ before pulling him into a tight hug. His dad pats his back awkwardly, pushes him away, and Stiles tells him that he’s allowed one cheat meal while Stiles is in New York.

His dad laughs, and says, ‘Kid, it’s sweet you think I listen to your rules about that at all.’

-

He lands in New York and shoots off a text to his dad, before successfully navigating the subway and managing to find his way to the hotel he’d booked for the weekend. He checks in and pulls out a shirt and jacket, changes out of his graphic tee and tucks (yes, _tucks,_ look at me now, Dad!) his shirt into his pants (pants, not jeans, PANTS). He’s wearing a belt. And actual shoes.

He heads out back onto the subway to try and find his way to the NYU campus. He only gets lost twice, successfully smacks away the hand of a pickpocket, and mentally high fives himself when he’s finally looking up at the main NYU building. Well, he thinks it’s the main NYU building. It turns out to be the main Science Faculty building.

After getting directions to the main building, he mentally fist bumps himself, because he’s actually found the place he was looking for, in big bad scary New York. He heads through the door, follows the signs to the main office, and approaches the counter, his dad’s old badge in hand.

He flashes it at the lady sat behind the desk as he walks up to her, puts it back in his pocket and leans against the counter.

‘I’m Detective Stilinski, I was hoping you could help me with an enquiry. I’m going to need the current address of one of your students, a Mr Isaac Lahey.’

She looks like she might protest, looks a little confused at how young Stiles is. But Stiles is, for once, thankful for how terrified people tend to be of the police, as he sees her put her scepticism aside and start typing.

Stiles smiles as she prints off a piece of paper and hands it over to him, and he says, ‘Thank you so much, Ma’am.’

As he walks away, he can’t help but boggle at how easy it apparently is to find out where someone lives. When he’s outside of the building, he pulls out the address and types it into Google Maps on his phone, and follows the arrows to student dorms about three blocks away. He flashes his badge at a student on their way out who lets him into Isaac’s building, and he climbs the stairs until he’s standing outside his door.

He takes a moment to catch his breath (stairs, man), before knocking, praying that Isaac’s in. He breathes a sigh of relief as the door is opened by a tall boy with very curly hair, and he asks, ‘Isaac?’

Isaac nods, looks confused, and asks, ‘Can I help you?’

‘You’re friends with Derek Hale, right? Do you know where he is?’

Isaac’s face goes through a series of emotions then, starts confused, goes to sad, and ends up affronted. ‘How do you know Derek?’

Stiles swallows. ‘I’m sorta friends with him. Can I come in, maybe?’

Isaac looks clearly unsure, looks either side of Stiles down the corridor, but nods and steps aside to let him in.

‘How do you know Derek?’ Isaac asks again, crossing his arms across his chest. ‘I know all Derek’s friends.’

Stiles feels bad about lying, has never been good at it, but he goes ahead, and says, ‘I knew him before he moved to New York. We grew up together, but I haven’t been able to get in touch with him for a couple of weeks. I was worried, so I thought I’d come up.’

Isaac’s expression softens then, and he sinks down onto his bed. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, man, but Derek’s in the hospital.’

Stiles plasters shock onto his face, and says, ‘Oh god, why? Is he okay?’ He sits in a chair by the desk, leaning towards Isaac. ‘Was it his seizures?’

Isaac shakes his head. ‘Not really. He started saying things, seeing things. He thought he could talk to some kid in California through telepathy, or some shit like that.’ He sighs, rubs his hands across his face. ‘It got scary. He was so insistent. And he’s so smart, how could he believe something like that?’

‘So what, is he in some kind of psychiatric ward?’

‘I think he’s with neurology, but getting therapy. Laura was worried he might take off, try to visit someone on the other side of the country that doesn’t exist.’

Stiles nods in understanding. ‘Could you tell me where to find him?’

Isaac smiles sadly. ‘I could, but he wouldn’t see you. He’s refused all visitors so far. He won’t even see Laura.’

Stiles puffs out his cheeks and exhales, says, ‘Why is that?’

Isaac shrugs. ‘I think he’s embarrassed, maybe? He’s basically been told that he’s pretty much insane, y’know? That he can’t believe his own mind.’ Isaac pauses, like he’s thinking carefully whether or not he should say what he wants to say. ‘He did actually let me visit him, the first day he was in. He begged me to try and get him out, to find this ‘Stiles’ guy and prove that he wasn’t crazy.’ He sighs. ‘I looked, I really tried. But I’m not even sure how to spell ‘Stiles’, and I couldn’t find anything.’ He smiles sadly. ‘I went back, told him I couldn’t find anything, that maybe he needed to be in the hospital to work things out. He just refused to talk to me anymore.’

He reaches out to grab a pen and piece of paper from the desk by Stiles, and scribbles down the address of the hospital, with a room and ward number. He hands it to Stiles, saying, ‘I hope you have better luck than I did.’ He pauses, eyebrows knitting together, and asks, ‘Sorry, what did you say your name was?’

Stiles stands, puts a hand on the door handle and pushes down, ready to pull it open, before saying, with a quirk of his lips, ‘Stiles.’

-

He gets to the hospital in an hour and a half, weaves his way through the corridors to find Derek’s ward with his heart in his throat and his stomach through the floor. He hadn’t even realised how nervous he was until he’d stepped inside the building.

When he reaches Derek’s ward, he nearly walks straight into a very angry Laura. She’s standing in front of the door with her arms across her chest and an expression of fury on her face. She pushes Stiles back easily with one hand, and says, ‘Are you ‘Stiles’?’ Stiles can hear the question mark around his name, can feel the venom in her tone washing over him.

He bites his lip and runs a hand across the back of his neck sheepishly. ‘Um. Yeah.’

And Stiles doesn’t know what to expect in reply but somehow he really doesn’t expect her furious, ‘You’re sick.’ He recoils instinctively, eyes wide as she says, ‘You’re here to make fun of my little brother? You heard about a kid who’s really unwell, and you decide to show up at his hospital bed and mock his mental health?’

‘What? No! I would never, please, I’m really Stiles! I swear!’

‘Get out,’ she says, pushing at his shoulder insistently. ‘Get out.’

‘Laura, please-‘

‘Get out!’

He stumbles back a little, torn between standing his ground and trying to come back later, when he feels the darkness cloud his vision. ‘Oh, hell,’ he says, sitting quickly on the ground before he falls, and he can hear Laura’s angry exclamation behind him. It’s the last thing he hears before he loses consciousness.

-

He watches Derek read some old book for a few minutes, before coming round to a whole team of doctors eyeing him carefully.

‘You okay, son?’ one of them asks, easing a hand under his head and sliding a pillow under it. Stiles wants to sit up, had never really enjoyed staying on the floor with everyone’s eyes on him, but as he lifts himself, the hand presses onto his shoulder, pushing him back down. ‘Best stay down until you get some color back into your cheeks.’ The voice says. ‘Your bracelet says you have seizures a lot. Are you okay?’

Stiles nods and says, his voice gruff, ‘I’ve had much worse.’

A few of the doctors move away, and then Stiles can see Laura watching him from the door, curiosity painted across her face.

After a few minutes, the doctor allows him to sit up, and a few moments later, he helps Stiles up to standing. Stiles sways for a moment, but puts a hand out to keep the doctor from immediately rushing to hold his hand. ‘I’m okay,’ he says.

After assuring the doctors that he’s absolutely fine, that there’s nothing to worry about, it happens all the time and he’s more than used to it, he sits heavily on one of the waiting chairs and drops his head into his hands.

He looks up when he feels someone sit beside him, and mentally prepares himself for a tirade of abuse when he sees Laura.

They’re both silent for a moment before she speaks, her voice measured and her words careful. ‘You have seizures too.’ Stiles nods. She takes a breath. ‘Has Derek been telling the truth?’ Stiles nods. He can see her eyes close softly, knows she must be feeling terrible. ‘This is so impossible. You know how impossible this is, right?’

Stiles quirks his mouth in amusement. ‘I’ve spent the last ten years of my life convinced I was insane. I know how impossible this is.’

She’s watching him closely, and while he’s afraid to meet her eye, he does anyway. ‘Why him? Why you?’

Stiles shrugs. ‘I have no idea. I don’t think we’ll ever know.’

She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms across her chest. ‘So, you see him? When you have seizures.’

‘Yes. Well, no. I see what he sees. Which I know is insane.’

She glances sideways at him. ‘What did you see just now?’

‘He was reading. Anna Karenina.’

She grunts, satisfied at the answer, and Stiles can’t help but feel smug.

‘I can’t make this make sense. How does this make sense?’

Stiles laughs. ‘It doesn’t.’

‘Did you ever tell anyone?’

‘Nope. For all the reasons Derek regrets telling anyone.’

Stiles watches a blush creep up her neck, and then her eyes begin to water. ‘I’ve been a terrible sister, haven’t I?’ Stiles shakes his head, but before he can protest, she carries on. ‘I was worried. You know the stuff he was saying didn’t make sense.’

Stiles nods. ‘You did what you thought you had to.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I see him?’

Laura looks conflicted, ready for a fight, before she deflates, and says, ‘Yeah, sure.’

Stiles smiles. ‘Thank you.’

He rises and pushes through the doors to Derek’s ward, goes to the nurses’ station, and says, ‘I’m here to see Derek Hale.’

The nurse behind the counter looks sceptical, and says, ‘Your name, please?’

‘Isaac,’ Stiles says, easily. ‘Tell him I’ve changed my mind.’

She doesn’t look impressed by him, but puts down her paperwork and strides down the hallway, stopping at a door halfway along and going inside.

She comes back out a moment later and nods to Stiles as she makes her way back. When they cross paths, she says, ‘Visiting hours end in an hour.’

Stiles thanks her, reaches Derek’s door, and pauses with his hand on the knob for a few moments, before taking a breath and pushing it open.


	12. Chapter 12

Derek’s not sure why he agrees to letting Isaac visit. If the visit goes anything like the last one did, it will be a humiliating waste of time. Isaac’s his best friend, but the pity Derek had seen in his eyes had sunk his stomach like a stone. But it’s been over a week since he’s spoken to someone outside of the hospital, and if Isaac’s changed his mind? Maybe it’s worth a shot.

Isaac could very well be lying just to see Derek again, but at least then he’d have another excuse for isolating himself.

The knob on his door is turning, and Derek watches with a cool gaze as it pushes open. And when the figure steps inside, his heart stops.

Maybe he really is crazy, because there’s no way that Stiles is actually standing in front of him.

Stiles smiles, and it’s like the sun. ‘Hey, Derek,’ he says, stepping forward and standing by Derek’s head. ‘Sorry for saying I was Isaac. I wanted to surprise you.’

Derek swallows, his mouth dry and desperate for words. He’s gaping at Stiles, he knows, eyes wide and mouth slack.

Stiles bites his lip, fiddles with his watch, eyes darting around the room, and he says, ‘Is it okay? That I’m here? Cos you look like – you know what, this was a bad idea, I’m gonna go.’

He turns to leave, cheeks red and flushed, but Derek darts out a hand and grabs onto his sleeve, says, ‘No, please,’ and Stiles turns back, relief painted across his face. ‘I’m just shocked,’ he explains. Stiles nods in understanding, and Derek gestures to the chair near his bed, says, ‘You could sit?’

Stiles smiles and sits down, pulling the chair closer to the bed and reaching out a hand. He takes Derek’s in his, and it’s like an electric shock pulsing through him, accelerating his heart and making blood pound in his ears. Derek moves his fingers so that they’re intertwined with Stiles’, and he squeezes gently. ‘I can’t believe you’re here. How are you here?’

Stiles smiles and shakes his head. ‘It’s not actually an interesting story. I’ll tell you some other time.’ He pauses. ‘It’s really good to see you. Properly. Finally.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘I spoke to Laura. She totally believes everything now. I reckon you’ll be allowed to go home soon.’

Derek’s eyes widen. ‘Really? How’d you manage that?’

Stiles shrugs. ‘Would you believe me if I said it was a combination of my natural charm and wit?’

‘Not for a second.’

‘I had a seizure outside and told her what book you were reading. I think just seeing me freaked her out enough to consider changing her mind.’

‘Which makes you the first person in history to convince Laura of something she didn’t want to believe.’

Stiles smiles, rubs his thumb against Derek’s hand. ‘Hey Derek?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Can I kiss you?’

‘Yeah.’

Stiles leans forward, closing the gap between them, and falters for a second before pressing hesitant lips against Derek’s. It’s nothing more than a brushing of lips, hardly any pressure at all, but Derek memorises the feel of it instantly. This is different from every other kiss he’s ever had. Better than Kate, better than Paige, better than every other drunken fumble since.

Stiles grows bolder, his lips more insistent as they move gently against Derek’s with soft, lazy movements. Derek lifts a hand to Stiles’ cheek, cups it gently and holds him close.

They kiss like that for a few more minutes, and it’s like coming home.

-

‘So, NYU, huh?’

‘Yep.’

‘Which you’re picking only because it’s a good school, and not at all because your new older boyfriend goes to NYU.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘And Derek? You’ll look after my son?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you’re aware that I have access to many guns, and that I have a lot of friends who would vouch for me if something happened to you?’

‘…I am now.’

‘Good.’


	13. Chapter 13

‘We could sell our story, you know,’ Stiles says into Derek’s bare shoulder, sated and sleepy. ‘We’d make a fortune.’ He sighs happily, running a hand up and down Derek’s side.

Derek snorts, threads his fingers through Stiles’ hair. ‘We would not. We’d get fifty bucks for a single page in a trashy magazine that doesn’t really believe us.’

‘Hey, fifty dollars is not to be sniffed at.’ He lifts his head, rests his chin against Derek’s collarbone and presses a kiss to his chin. ‘I can imagine the headline now: “Seizure Soulmates: Connected by their tragic childhoods, kept apart by tragic circumstance.”’

‘You’re ridiculous.’

‘I’m awesome.’

Derek shifts, pushing Stiles onto his back and swinging a leg over him, bracketing Stiles’ head with his forearms. He leans down, presses a kiss to Stiles’ lips, waiting a few moments before deepening it.

Stiles moans and reaches up to tangle his hands in Derek’s hair, to pull him close insistently. Derek stops, then, drops back down for one last quick kiss, and says, ‘You, Mr Worst-Journalist-Ever, are going to be late for class.’

Stiles huffs and says, ‘You’re so lucky you don’t have to go to classes anymore. My brain’s had enough and it wants to quit.’

Derek laughs and climbs off the bed, picking clothes at random from their wardrobe and throwing them to Stiles. ‘I only have to work nine hours a day to earn money so that we don’t starve to death. Easy.’

‘Exactly. Hey.’ Stiles says, coming up behind Derek, and wrapping two arms around his bare waist, resting his chin on his shoulder. ‘I was thinking, maybe we could learn to drive.’

Derek lifts an eyebrow. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. It’s been two years, so we’re allowed.’

Derek nods, but says, ‘It’s not the easiest, learning to drive in New York.’

Stiles shrugs. ‘Summer’s coming up. We could stay with my dad, learn in Beacon Hills.’

‘We could.’

‘Does that mean we will?’

Derek turns in Stiles’ embrace, kisses his cheek. ‘I’ll tell my boss to find someone to cover for me.’

Stiles smiles, says, ‘Wicked,’ loops his arms around Derek’s neck and drags him in for a kiss, before pulling away to throw his clothes on. He glances at the clock as he goes, lets out an ‘oh SHIT,’ before running to the door at top speed.

He’s out within ten seconds and Derek smiles fondly. A moment later, the door is flung open again, and Stiles’ calls out a frantic, ‘Love you!’

He shuts the door again before Derek can even respond, so Derek sends him a text for him to check when he arrives at class.

It’s still so unreal, sometimes, being with Stiles. There’s still a part of him waiting for him to wake up from some mega-seizure, to be confronted with a reality without him. But with each passing day, all that happens is that he falls more and more in love with Stiles, wants to spend every second with him.

Sometimes, when he’s away on business or Stiles is visiting his dad, Derek misses the seizures. Sometimes. But honestly? As much as he grew to love getting to see things through Stiles’ eyes, nothing compares to standing beside him, hand in hand, and watching the world turn with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come ramble sterek at me: [slowunsteady](http://slowunsteady.tumblr.com)  
> Happy to receive any and all feedback!  
> Thank you for reading and hope you enjoyed!


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